LETTERS Lordly censorship
Sir: Most people will by now be aware what motivates a top Tory like Lord Gilmour to resent my work on British 20th-century his- tory (Letters, 20/27 December). Now he denounces my reference to King James's army in the Monmouth rebellion as having been outnumbered by three to one as `absurd', on the grounds that 'contempo- rary estimates of his [Monmouth's] forces at the battle of Sedgemoor vary between over 7,000 and 3,200 . . while the govern- ment had some 2,500 regulars'.
In fact John Evelyn recorded in his diary: `the whole number [of rebels at Sedgemoor is] reported to be above 8,000, the King's but 2,700'; while Sir John Reresby learned that 'the Duke of Monmouth's Army was swelled to a Body of 12,000 Foot, and 1,500 Horse . . . The King's Army, that was near- est to Monmouth, was commanded by Lord Feversham, and did not consist of above 3,000 Foot, and 500 Horse.'
The 20th-century history of which Lord Gilmour disapproves so strongly if irrele- vantly is, I take it, The Minister and the Mas- sacres, now uniquely censored by public and university libraries throughout England and Wales — despite its never having been the subject of any libel action. I do hope His Lordship will be magnanimous enough not to contemplate extending the ban to earlier historical eras, in which I had innocently supposed I was free to extend my studies. Nikolai Tolstoy
Court Close, Southmoor, Berkshire
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